The virtual holocaust Israel is now waging against the Gaza Strip is taking its toll on innocent civilians. The shocking scenes speak for themselves. The gruesomeness transcends reality; it exceeds by far the most eloquent of words.

Gaza-2008-9 is very much like Dresden-1945. And as Dresden was annihilated by the RAF toward the end of the Second World War, the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza are being decapitated and thoroughly terrorized by the Israeli army, the Wehrmacht of our time.

But there is obviously a fundamental and conspicuous difference between Gaza and Dresden. Dresden was targeted by the allies as an act of sheer vengeance and revenge for what the Nazi war machine had done, including German attacks on London and other British cities.

But Gaza committed no crime against Israel. To be sure, the opposite is quite true. Have we forgotten that the bulk of the Gaza victims, who are being annihilated with the Zionist war machine, happen to be refugees and their children and grandchildren uprooted from their towns and villages across the borders inside Israel?

In 1948, Israel uprooted them in wave after wave of genocidal ethnic cleansing, and ever since has been trying to liquidate them by bombing their homes, killing their children, bulldozing their farms and lately by trying to starve them to death.

And now, the six-decade reign of terror and death is being culminated with an aerial holocaust, all for the purpose of displaying “Jewish power” and “heroism.”!!! Well, what heroism is there in having the state-of-the-art of the American machine of death rain missiles and bombs, including Bunker Busters, on unprotected apartment buildings, mosques, streets, pharmacies, college dormitories? This is not heroism; it is a sheer act of cowardice.

The Nazis ganged up on defenseless people more than six decades ago, but they at least didn’t claim to be carrying out heroic acts as self-absorbed and gleeful Israeli leaders are doing now.

In truth, Gaza is being crucified because it refuses to succumb to the cruelty and supremacy of the “holy tribe,” because it refuses to die quietly and continues to cling to life and look forth for a better tomorrow, because Gaza is saying “give me freedom or give me death.”

The Nazis of our time want Gaza to die quietly, or at least as quietly as possible. Israeli behavior leaves no doubt as to the diabolical designs of the Judeo-Nazi entity.

But the Israeli military and political establishments don’t want to appear before the world as they really are, as Nazis par excellence who think, behave and act like the Nazis. This is why they are trying to cover up their crimes with a frantic campaign of fabricated lies.

But Nazis are Nazis even if they have Jewish names and pretend to be the victims. In the final analysis it doesn’t matter if Nazis call themselves “chosenites” or “master race” or “ubermenschen,” or even “victims.”

Sowing hatred

Israel is not only wreaking death, terror and havoc on defenseless Gazans. It is also implanting sowing hatred, a lot of hatred, in the hearts and minds millions of people who are watching Israel decapitate Gaza.

This is undoubtedly going to be one of the lasting aftereffects of this madness.

The gruesome and phantasmagoric images which hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims and others around the world are watching on their TV screens around the clock are a sure prescription for decades of hatred and sullen enmity toward Jews throughout the Muslim world.

Arab and Muslim children won’t have to read about Israeli Nazism in their textbooks. They are watching it live on their TV screens.

Let it be clear to all and sundry. Israel is telling an entire generation of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims that they either surrender to the Jewish Third Reich or become “terrorists.”

They will become “terrorists” and be it as it may.

Surely, the pornographic slaughter will eventually boomerang on Israel and regretfully on Jews. Unfortunately, many innocent Jews will pay the price just as mostly innocent Palestinians are paying the price, with their lives and the lives of their children and beloved ones, for the brutal ugliness of the Zionist mindset. In the final analysis, anti-Semitism is manufactured in Israel, not in Damascus or Cairo or even Gaza.

Hamas

Israel says its aim is to destroy Hamas. Well, there is no doubt that Israel possesses the military ability to destroy the Hamas government. Israel, after all, is a military superpower which also happens to be more or less in control of the politics and policies of the United States and to a lesser extent the governments of Europe.

However, destroying Hamas’s government is one thing, and destroying Hamas the movement, is quite another.

Hamas has hundreds of thousands of supporters in occupied Palestine s well as tens of millions of sympathizers across the Arab and Muslim world. These will not disappear even if the Gaza governments does.

The ongoing huge demonstrations in solidarity with Hamas, now flooding the Arab world, shows that Hamas is more, much more, than a local nationalist-Islamic movement that can be eradicated by Israeli firepower.

Yes, Hamas has obviously been hit hard. But the movement is by no means about to die or even get weaker. In fact, there are many indications that Hamas will get stronger, at least in terms of popularity and stature.

The American puppet regimes in the Arab world may not like Hamas. Some of them may even be gloating over the Gaza calamity.

However, Hamas is definitely winning the hearts and minds of the Arab masses from Casablanca to Bahrain. This may not yield tangible benefits immediately, but the long-term gains are absolutely certain, and this is exactly what Hamas is seeking.

Well, let us suppose for the sake of argument that Israel succeeds in “terminating” the Hamas-led government in the Gaza Strip as Israeli leaders have been saying. Would this end the Islamic resistance to the Israeli occupation? Would this allow Israel to liquidate the Palestinian cause by imposing a “peace settlement” on the weak Palestinian Authority?

Nay, this won’t happen at all, because Hamas, whether we like or not, represents and encapsulates the spiritual essence of the Palestinian people and their yearning for freedom and justice.

More to the point, the contemplated elimination of the Hamas government by Israel would eventually be proven to be one of the stupidest Israeli misdeeds ever.

First of all, it would free the resistance group from the burden of government and allow it anew to carry out more ferocious attacks against Israel without having to worry about the bombing by Israel of buildings and security headquarters and hospitals.

In fact, Hamas had never wanted to be in government let alone form one. Hamas all along had wanted to be in a position to influence any Palestinian government, but not to be in the driver’s seat itself.

However, the outcome of the 2006 elections imposed the burden of government on Hamas especially after Fatah refused to join Hamas in forming a government of national unity.

So, in a certain since, the disappearance of the Hamas government in Gaza would be a bless in disguise for Hamas.

Remember these words very well. Because the conflict with Israel is not going to end in ten years or twenty or even fifty years.

Writing in the New Statesman, John Pilger calls on 40 years of reporting the Middle East to describe the 'why' of Israel's bloody onslaught on the besieged people of Gaza - an attack that has little to do with Hamas or Israel's right to exist.

“When the truth is replaced by silence,” the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, “the silence is a lie.” It may appear the silence is broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia’s incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemeral we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.

They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, “Israel’s right to exist”. They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine’s right to exist was cancelled 61 years ago and the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous “Plan D” resulted in the murderous de-population of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Jewish army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as “ethnic cleansing”. Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon, “What shall we do with the Arabs?” Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, “made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, ‘Expel them’. The order to expel an entire population “without attention to age” was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the world’s most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapan Party co-leader Meir Ya’ari noted “how easily” Israel’s leaders spoke of how it was “possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the roads with them because such is the imperative of strategy … who remembers who used this means against our people during the [Second World] war... we are appalled.”

Every subsequent “war” Israel has waged has had the same objective: the expulsion of the native people and the theft of more and more land. The lie of David and Goliath, of perennial victim, reached its apogee in 1967 when the propaganda became a righteous fury that claimed the Arab states had struck first. Since then, mostly Jewish truth-tellers such as Avi Schlaim, Noam Chomsky, the late Tanya Reinhart, Neve Gordon, Tom Segev, Yuri Avnery, Ilan Pappe and Norman Finklestein have dispatched this and other myths and revealed a state shorn of the humane traditions of Judaism, whose unrelenting militarism is the sum of an expansionist, lawless and racist ideology called zionism. “It seems,” wrote the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe on 2 January, “that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as desperate events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system... Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government , this ideology – in its most consensual and simplistic variety – has allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanise the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide].”

In Gaza, the enforced starvation and denial of humanitarian aid, the piracy of life-giving resources such as fuel and water, the denial of medicines and treatment, the systematic destruction of infrastructure and the killing and maiming of the civilian population, 50 per cent of whom are children, meet the international standard of the Genocide Convention. “Is it an irresponsible overstatement,” asked Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and international law authority at Princeton University, “to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not.”

In describing a “holocaust-in-the making”, Falk was alluding to the Nazis’ establishment of Jewish ghettos in Poland. For one month in 1943, the captive Polish Jews led by Mordechaj Anielewiz fought off the German army and the SS, but their resistance was finally crushed and the Nazis exacted their final revenge. Falk is also a Jew. Today’s holocaust-in-the-making, which began with Ben-Gurion’s Plan D, is in its final stages. The difference today is that it is a joint US-Israeli project. The F-16 jet fighters, the 250-pound “smart” GBU-39 bombs supplied on the eve of the attack on Gaza, having been approved by a Congress dominated by the Democratic Party, plus the annual $2.4 billion in war-making “aid”, give Washington de facto control. It beggars belief that President-elect Obama was not informed. Outspoken on Russia’s war in Georgia and the terrorism in Mumbai, Obama’s silence on Palestine marks his approval, which is to be expected, given his obsequiousness to the Tel Aviv regime and its lobbyists during the presidential campaign and his appointment of Zionists as his secretary of state, chief of staff and principal Middle East advisers. When Aretha Franklin sings “Think”, her wonderful 1960s anthem to freedom, at Obama’s inauguration on 21 January, I trust someone with the brave heart of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the shoe-thrower, will shout: “Gaza!”

The asymmetry of conquest and terror is clear. Plan D is now “Operation Cast Lead”, which is the unfinished “Operation Justified Vengeance”. The latter was launched by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 when, with Bush’s approval, he used F-16s against Palestinian towns and villages for the first time. In the same year, the authoritative Jane’s Foreign Report disclosed that the Blair government had given Israel the “green light” to attack the West Bank after it was shown Israel’s secret designs for a bloodbath. It was typical of New Labour Party’s enduring, cringing complicity in Palestine’s agony. However, the 2001 Israeli plan, reported Jane’s, needed the “trigger” of a suicide bombing which would cause “numerous deaths and injuries [because] the ‘revenge’ factor is crucial”. This would “motivate Israeli soldiers to demolish the Palestinians”. What alarmed Sharon and the author of the plan, General Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Chief of Staff, was a secret agreement between Yasser Arafat and Hamas to ban suicide attacks. On 23 November, 2001, Israeli agents assassinated the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hunud, and got their “trigger”; the suicide attacks resumed in response to his killing.

Something uncannily similar happened on 5 November last, when Israeli special forces attacked Gaza, killing six people. Once again, they got their propaganda “trigger”. A ceasefire initiated and sustained by the Hamas government – which had imprisoned its violators - was shattered by the Israeli attack and home-made rockets were fired into what used to be Palestine before its Arab occupants were “cleansed”. The On 23 December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire, but Israel’s charade was such that its all-out assault on Gaza had been planned six months earlier, according to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz.

Behind this sordid game is the “Dagan Plan”, named after General Meir Dagan, who served with Sharon in his bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Now head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organisation, Dagan is the author of a “solution” that has seen the imprisonment of Palestinians behind a ghetto wall snaking across the West Bank and in Gaza, effectively a concentration camp. The establishment of a quisling government in Ramallah under Mohammed Abbas is Dagan’s achievement, together with a hasbara (propaganda) campaign relayed through a mostly supine, if intimidated western media, notably in America, that says Hamas is a terrorist organisation devoted to Israel’s destruction and to “blame” for the massacres and siege of its own people over two generations, long before its creation. “We have never had it so good,” said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir in 2006. “The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine.” In fact, Hamas’s real threat is its example as the Arab world’s only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians’ oppressor and tormentor. This was demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in the western media as “Hamas’s seizure of power”. Likewise, Hamas is never described as a government, let alone democratic. Neither is its proposal of a ten-year truce as a historic recognition of the “reality” of Israel and support for a two-state solution with just one condition: that the Israelis obey international law and end their illegal occupation beyond the 1967 borders. As every annual vote in the UN General Assembly demonstrates, 99 per cent of humanity concurs. On 4 January, the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto, described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a “monstrosity”.

When the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken, the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a “1948-style solution” – the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority followed by mass expulsions into smaller and smaller “cantonments” and perhaps finally into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian exile in Britain, “a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed... Look to the Iraq of today: that is what [Sharon] had in store for us, and he has nearly achieved it.”

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi is an American writer on Palestine. She has a Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. “Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic,” she wrote on 31 December. “But I’m not talking about World War Two, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad (the president of Iran) or Ashkenazi Jews. What I’m referring to is the holocaust we are all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over the past 60 years... Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy doesn’t get more anti-Semitic than this.” She quoted Rachel Corrie, the young American who went to Palestine to defend Palestinians and was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. “I am in the midst of a genocide,” wrote Corrie, “which I am also indirectly supporting and for which my government is largely responsible.”

Reading the words of both, I am struck by the use of “responsibility”. Breaking the lie of silence is not an esoteric abstraction but an urgent responsibility that falls to those with the privilege of a platform. With the BBC cowed, so too is much of journalism, merely allowing vigorous debate within unmovable invisible boundaries, ever fearful of the smear of anti-Semitism. The unreported news, meanwhile, is that the death toll in Gaza is the equivalent of 18,000 dead in Britain. Imagine, if you can.

Then there are the academics, the deans and teachers and researchers. Why are they silent as they watch a university bombed and hear the Association of University Teachers in Gaza plea for help? Are British universities now, as Terry Eagleton believes, no more than “intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries”?

Then there are the writers. In the dark year of 1939, the Third Writers’ Congress was held at Carnegie Hall in New York and the likes of Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein sent messages and spoke up to ensure the lie of silence was broken. By one account, 3,500 jammed the auditorium and a thousand were turned away. Today, this mighty voice of realism and morality is said to be obsolete; the literary review pages affect an ironic hauteur of irrelevance; false symbolism is all. As for the readers, their moral and political imagination is to be pacified, not primed. The anti-Muslim Martin Amis expressed this well in Visiting Mrs Nabokov: “The dominance of the self is not a flaw, it is an evolutionary characteristic; it is just how things are.”

If that is how things are, we are diminished as a civilised society. For what happens in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants the impunity of war criminals the immunity of our silence, while we contort our own intellect and morality, or gives us the power to speak out. For the moment I prefer my own memory of Gaza: of the people’s courage and resistance and their “luminous humanity”, as Karma Nabulsi put it. On my last trip there, I was rewarded with a spectacle of Palestinian flags fluttering in unlikely places. It was dusk and children had done this. No one told them to do it. They made flagpoles out of sticks tied together, and a few of them climbed on to a wall and held the flag between them, some silently, others crying out. They do this every day when they know foreigners are leaving, believing the world will not forget them.

John Pilger_________________The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.

also of interest
Great rebuttal by CNN anchor against a Israel Spokeswomenhttp://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=w6fn5NZ6LBk_________________'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'

“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”

MIDEAST: Israel Rejected Hamas Ceasefire Offer in December
By Gareth Porter*
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45350
WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (IPS) - Contrary to Israel's argument that it was forced to launch its air and ground offensive against Gaza in order to stop the firing of rockets into its territory, Hamas proposed in mid-December to return to the original Hamas-Israel ceasefire arrangement, according to a U.S.-based source who has been briefed on the proposal.

The proposal to renew the ceasefire was presented by a high-level Hamas delegation to Egyptian Minister of Intelligence Omar Suleiman at a meeting in Cairo Dec. 14. The delegation, said to have included Moussa Abu Marzouk, the second-ranking official in the Hamas political bureau in Damascus, told Suleiman that Hamas was prepared to stop all rocket attacks against Israel if the Israelis would open up the Gaza border crossings and pledge not to launch attacks in Gaza.

The Hamas officials insisted that Israel not be allowed to close or reduce commercial traffic through border crossings for political purposes, as it had done during the six-month lull, according to the source. They asked Suleiman, who had served as mediator between Israel and Hamas in negotiating the original six-month Gaza ceasefire last spring, to "put pressure" on Israel to take that the ceasefire proposal seriously.

Suleiman said he could not pressure Israel but could only make the suggestion to Israeli officials. It could not be learned, however, whether Israel explicitly rejected the Hamas proposal or simply refused to respond to Egypt.

The readiness of Hamas to return to the ceasefire conditionally in mid-December was confirmed by Dr. Robert Pastor, a professor at American University and senior adviser to the Carter Centre, who met with Khaled Meshal, chairman of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus on Dec. 14, along with former President Jimmy Carter. Pastor told IPS that Meshal indicated Hamas was willing to go back to the ceasefire that had been in effect up to early November "if there was a sign that Israel would lift the siege on Gaza".

Pastor said he passed Meshal's statement on to a "senior official" in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) the day after the meeting with Meshal. According to Pastor, the Israeli official said he would get back to him, but did not.

"There was an alternative to the military approach to stopping the rockets," said Pastor. He added that Israel is unlikely to have an effective ceasefire in Gaza unless it agrees to lift the siege.

The Israeli Embassy in Washington declined to comment Thursday on whether there had been any discussion of a ceasefire proposal from Hamas in mid-December that would have stopped the rocket firing.

Abu Omar, a spokesman for Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Syria, told CBS news Wednesday that Hamas could only accept the ceasefire plan now being proposed by France and Egypt, which guarantees an end to Israel's blockade of Gaza as soon as hostilities on both sides were halted. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said Israel would only support the proposal if it also included measures to prevent Hamas from re-arming.

The interest of Hamas in a ceasefire agreement that would actually open the border crossings was acknowledged at a Dec. 21 Israeli cabinet meeting -- five days before the beginning of the Israeli military offensive -- by Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel's internal security agency, Shin Bet. "Make no mistake, Hamas is interested in maintaining the truce," Diskin was quoted by Y-net News agency as saying.

Israel's rejection of the Hamas December proposal reflected its preference for maintaining Israel's primary leverage over Hamas and the Palestinian population of Gaza -- its ability to choke off food and goods required for the viability of its economy -- even at the cost of continued Palestinian rocket attacks.

The ceasefire agreement that went into effect Jun. 19, 2008 required that Israel lift the virtual siege of Gaza which Israel had imposed after the June 2007 Hamas takeover. Although the terms of the agreement were not made public at the time, they were included in a report published this week by the International Crisis Group (ICG), which obtained a copy of the understanding last June.

In addition to a halt in all military actions by both sides, the agreement called on Israel to increase the level of goods entering Gaza by 30 percent over the pre-lull period within 72 hours and to open all border crossings and "allow the transfer of all goods that were banned and restricted to go into Gaza" within 13 days after the beginning of the ceasefire.

Nevertheless, Israeli officials freely acknowledged in interviews with ICG last June that they had no intention of opening the border crossings fully, even though they anticipated that this would be the source of serious conflict with Hamas.

The Israelis opened the access points only partially, and in late July Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni declared that the border crossings should remain closed until Hamas agreed to the release of Gilad Shalit, an IDF soldier abducted by Hamas in June 2006. The Hamas representative in Lebanon, Usam Hamdan, told the ICG in late December that the flow of goods and fuel into Gaza had been only 15 percent of its basic needs.

Despite Israel's refusal to end the siege, Hamas brought rocket and mortar fire from Gaza to a virtual halt last summer and fall, as revealed by a report by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC) in Tel Aviv last month. ITIC is part of the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Centre (IICC), an NGO which is close to the Israeli intelligence community.

In the first days after the ceasefire took effect, Islamic Jihad fired nine rockets and a few mortar rounds in retaliation for Israeli assassinations of their members in the West Bank. In August another eight rockets were fired by various groups, according to IDF data cited in the report. But it shows that only one rocket was launched from Gaza in September and one in October.

The report recalls that Hamas "tried to enforce the terms of the arrangement" on other Palestinian groups, taking "a number of steps against networks which violated the arrangement," including short-term detention and confiscating their weapons. It even found that Hamas had sought support in Gazan public opinion for its policy of maintaining the ceasefire.

On Nov. 4 -- just when the ceasefire was most effective -- the IDF carried out an attack against a house in Gaza in which six members of Hamas's military wing were killed, including two commanders, and several more were wounded. The IDF explanation for the operation was that it had received intelligence that a tunnel was being dug near the Israeli security fence for the purpose of abducing Israeli soldiers.

Hamas officials asserted, however, that the tunnel was being dug for defensive purposes, not to capture IDF personnel, according to Pastor, and one IDF official confirmed that fact to him.

After that Israeli attack, the ceasefire completely fell apart, as Hamas began openly firing rockets into Israel, the IDF continued to carry out military operations inside Gaza, and the border crossings were "closed most of the time", according to the ITIC account.

Israel cited the firing of 190 rockets over six weeks as the justification for its massive attack on Gaza.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

(END/2009)_________________'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'

“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”

42 years later on 8th January 2009 - UNSCR 1860 The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question

UN SCR 1860 wrote:

United Nations S/RES/1860 (2009)

Security Council Distr.: General

8 January 2009

09-20432 (E)
*0920432*

Resolution 1860 (2009)

Adopted by the Security Council at its 6063rd meeting, on 8 January 2009

The Security Council,

Recalling all of its relevant resolutions, including resolutions

242 (1967), The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question
338(1973), Cease-Fire in the Middle East (22 Oct)
1397 (2002), The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question
1515 (2003) The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question
and 1850 (2008), The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question

Stressing that the Gaza Strip constitutes an integral part of the territory occupied in 1967 and will be a part of the Palestinian state,

Emphasizing the importance of the safety and well-being of all civilians,

Expressing grave concern at the escalation of violence and the deterioration of the situation, in particular the resulting heavy civilian casualties since the refusal to extend the period of calm; and emphasizing that the Palestinian and Israeli civilian populations must be protected,

Expressing grave concern also at the deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza,

Emphasizing the need to ensure sustained and regular flow of goods and people through the Gaza crossings,

Recognizing the vital role played by UNRWA in providing humanitarian and economic assistance within Gaza,

Recalling that a lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be achieved by peaceful means,

Reaffirming the right of all States in the region to live in peace within secure and internationally recognized borders,

1. Stresses the urgency of and calls for an immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza;

2. Calls for the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including of food, fuel and medical treatment;

3. Welcomes the initiatives aimed at creating and opening humanitarian corridors and other mechanisms for the sustained delivery of humanitarian aid;

S/RES/1860 (2009)
2 09-20432

4. Calls on Member States to support international efforts to alleviate the humanitarian and economic situation in Gaza, including through urgently needed additional contributions to UNRWA and through the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee;

5. Condemns all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism;

6. Calls upon Member States to intensify efforts to provide arrangements and guarantees in Gaza in order to sustain a durable ceasefire and calm, including to prevent illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition and to ensure the sustained reopening of the crossing points on the basis of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access between the Palestinian Authority and Israel; and in this regard, welcomes the Egyptian initiative, and other regional and international efforts that are under way;

7. Encourages tangible steps towards intra-Palestinian reconciliationi including in support of mediation efforts of Egypt and the League of Arab States as expressed in the 26 November 2008 resolution, and consistent with Security Council resolution 1850 (2008) and other relevant resolutions;

8. Calls for renewed and urgent efforts by the parties and the international community to achieve a comprehensive peace based on the vision of a region where two democratic States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace with secure and recognized borders, as envisaged in Security Council resolution 1850 (2008), and recalls also the importance of the Arab Peace Initiative;

9. Welcomes the Quartet’s consideration, in consultation with the parties, of an international meeting in Moscow in 2009;

10. Decides to remain seized of the matter.

_________________The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.

Last edited by Mark Gobell on Tue Jan 13, 2009 7:50 pm; edited 1 time in total

42 years earlier on 22nd November 1967 UNSCR 242 (1967 ) [PDF] The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question (referenced above) [text here]

UNSCR 242 (1967) wrote:

United Nations Security Council Resolution 242
NOVEMBER 22, 1967

The Security Council,

Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East,

Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security,

Emphasizing further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter,

Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:

Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;

Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;

Affirms further the necessity

For guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area;

For achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem;

For guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political independence of every State in the area, through measures including the establishment of demilitarized zones;

Requests the Secretary General to designate a Special Representative to proceed to the Middle East to establish and maintain contacts with the States concerned in order to promote agreement and assist efforts to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement in accordance with the provisions and principles in this resolution;

Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council on the progress of the efforts of the Special Representative as soon as possible.

If your government behaved in this way would you perhaps consider you were living in a rogue state ?

A state that does have WMD. With a verifiable paper trail.

Deserving of shock and awe ?

With no lies needed, just countless UN Security Council Resolutions, ignored for decades, since 1948 ?

Would you not consider that the land formerly known as Palestine was under occupation by an aggressive terrorist gang ?

Would not the current war on terror extend to the axis of evil in Tel Aviv ?

The United Nations Security Council on the 8th of January 2009 "recalls all of its relevant resolutions, including resolutions" 242 of 22nd of November 1967 that specifically states, among other things:

Quote:

Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;

42 years ago ?

And still the UN references that resolution today ?

Does the UN have teeth for Israel ?

By the definition of international law, the state of Israel contravenes those statutes and refuses to operate within the United Nations Charter.

Israel must operate within the United Nations or be expelled from the United Nations.

The credibility and mandate of the United Nations, under it's charters is jeopardised by the continued membership of the failed, rogue state of Israel.

If the United Nations means anything, then Israel, whilst it remains a member, must be encouraged, by force if necessary, to comply with international law._________________The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.

BRITISH MPs yesterday lined up to give their strongest condemnation yet of Israel's actions in Gaza, branding Ehud Olmert's government "mass murderers" and calling for the country to face sanctions.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, faced cross-party demands for Israel's ambassador to be expelled from London and for Britain to recall its representative from Tel Aviv.

The strongest criticism in the one hour session, that followed a statement from the Foreign Secretary, came from Sir Gerald Kaufman, a former Labour minister, who is Jewish.

Directing his fury at the Israeli prime minister, foreign minister and defence minister, he said: "Olmert, (Tzipi] Livni and (Ehud] Barak are mass murderers, war criminals and bring shame on the Jewish people whose Star of David they use as a badge in Gaza."

He suggested the British government would have taken a more strident tone if it had been Hamas who had "slaughtered 900 Israelis".

Peter Kilfoyle, a former Labour defence minister, also accused Israel of "state-sponsored terrorism" and urged the government to ensure no arms were exported to the country.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader, said if any other democratic state had behaved in the same way, it would be faced with economic sanctions.

Michael Howard, the former Conservative leader, took a swipe at the outgoing Bush administration's lack of progress on the Middle East and said there was a "glimmer of hope on the horizon" with the election of Barack Obama, the US president-elect.

"It is only the president of the US who has the means to secure the concessions from both sides that are necessary to achieve a viable Palestinian state and a lasting settlement," he said.

Chris Mullin, a former Foreign Office minister, said "These are war crimes that we are witnessing in Gaza.

"Britain should start talking with EU allies about sanctions and "at the very least to stop selling them weapons and, perhaps, the withdrawal of our ambassador".

Mr Miliband rejected calls for severing diplomatic ties and imposing sanctions, saying this would simply isolate Israel. However, he called for abuse allegations made by both sides to be investigated.

He added that there was "no evidence" that UK weapons were used by the Israeli defence force in the latest attacks.

The Scotsman_________________The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.

News from a Red Cross Worker In GazaGo to original for links!http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/14/news-from-a-red-cros.html
Posted by Xeni Jardin, January 14, 2009 9:26 AM | permalink
(Editor's note: post updated below with notes, related factchecking, and news citations. This is a complex story, and many readers have understandably strong feelings about wanting to ensure accuracy and fairness.)
A Boing Boing reader writes:

I do not take sides, as the Gaza civilians are victims of both Hamas and the Israelis. FYI my nephew works for the ICRC in Gaza, and therefore has first-hand knowledge of what's happening on the ground. Here is a summary of what he said in a recent phone call to his family.
- He's holding on in a bunker with metal shutters, he cannot bail out because he is responsible for too many people looking up to him, but 4 ICRC expats have left because of physical/mental exhaustion, and his Palestinian colleagues (Red Cross/Red Crescent) are equally exhausted, plus they have to get back to their families at night and organize survival (assuming their home hasn't been destroyed yet.)

- He has to organize the evacuation and taking care of the dead and wounded (100 yesterday.)

- The Israeli army deliberately intimidates, and aims at humanitarian groups, and they did shoot at an ICRC ambulance convoy three days ago, nearly killing a driver.

- Everything is demolished, and sometimes the ICRC has to use donkey carts because it is the only way to get through, and get at the dead and wounded. The Israeli army refuses to help.

- Palestinian kids are traumatized mentally, and forever.

- Both sides [Hamas & Israelis] have turned mad.

- The media doesn't always tell the truth. For instance, the supposedly phosphor bombs are only a rumor, and nothing is confirmed. My nephew thinks that they are only lighting devices, but that they can burn people.

- Norwegian doctors based in Gaza have denounced Israel's use of phosphor bombs, but there is no substantiated evidence.

- There were talks about having humanitarian planes taking wounded Palestinian kids to Europe for care-taking. That is not the solution: those kids are traumatized to start with ("terrorized" as my nephew put it,) they only speak Arabic, they are better kept with their families. There are great doctors in Gaza, but the long Israeli-enforced apartheid and subsequent shortages limit their ability to work. The best thing to do is to send doctors in the immediate area, i.e. setting field hospitals in Rafat on the border with Egypt, or on the border with Israel with doctors who speak Arabic.

- The ICRC president came for one day to motivate the Gaza team, and said that this conflict was ICRC's worst since the Solferino battle, which prompted Henri Dunant to create the Red Cross (Wikipedia reference).

- The (reduced) IRC team in Gaza has enough food, water and electricity reserves for the time being, but they have to work with constant bombardment/shelling, i.e. no sleep. They think that they are doing a great job, but don't have much hope for the future of the Gaza people.

Previously: Al Jazeera Releases Gaza Video Archive Under Creative Commons License
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
Update: A brief editor's note here, to address some readers' concern that this post might imply an editorial position that human rights violations are being committed by only one side in the conflict. The head of the ICRC issued a statement last week calling for Hamas to cease targeting civilians, also, and there are reports Hamas fighters have hijacked ambulances or aid convoys for use as military vehicles (I am looking for verifiable reports, will add notes as I find). Regarding the submitter's comment that "The Israeli army deliberately intimidates, and aims at humanitarian groups, and they did shoot at an ICRC ambulance convoy three days ago, nearly killing a driver" -- we will note, for context, that there are reports of similar violations by Hamas fighters. I cannot find news reports or ICRC statements substantiating the ambulance attack, but will continue to look, and I welcome discussion in the comments thread. See update below. Here is a related report, and here is a news item about the Israeli military's use of white phosphorus (also referenced above) in combat. This NYT story today also addresses the conflict within Israel about civilian losses, and conduct in war. This item addresses the current civilian death toll on both sides.
Update 2: Regarding the submitter's note about a recent incident in which an ICRC ambulance convoy was shot, news reports indicate that it happened within the past week. Here are several news links related to this story:

According to broadcast reports, an ICRC representative confirmed that the organization had secured safe passage with the Israelis for this aid convoy, and that they routinely follow protocol by slowing down or stopping at checkpoints. This incident, in which the convoy was apparently fired on by Israeli military forces, underscored the need to re-clarify that understanding with the Israeli military forces.
And regarding the submitter's note that there is no evidence phosphorus bombs are being used on Gaza targets -- there is evidence now. Link 1, Link 2, Link 3._________________'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'

“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”

By a margin of 26-3, the Israeli Central Elections Committee decided to ban the Balad Party from running in next month’s election. By a margin of 21-8, they also banned the United Arab List-Ta’al (UAL-T). The two bans will prevent more than half of the current Arab members of Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, from running for reelection.

The Arab parties earned the ire of the most hawkish elements in the Israeli government by publicly opposing the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. Balad likewise made enemies by explicitly calling for equal rights for all citizens of Israel, regardless of national or ethnic identity, which the ruling Kadima Party said would “undermine Israel’s identity as a Jewish state.”

A handful of Arabs will remain on the ballots across Israel, running for as-yet-unbanned Jewish majority parties, but with the general consensus among most of the population that Israeli Arabs are traitors based purely on their ethnic background, they would seem to have an uphill battle. Many disillusioned Arab voters may not vote at all, now that the only significant Arab parties aren’t allowed on the ballot.

During the discussion, Balad Chairman Jamal Zahaika called the move to ban his party “a test for Israeli democracy” and warned that the ban would lead to an outright Arab boycott of the election.

Zahaika also asked Avigdor Lieberman, the driving force behind the ban, “Why are you afraid of democracy?” Lieberman declared Balad a terrorist organization and said “whoever values life” would understand the need to ban it.
http://news.antiwar.com/2009/01/12/israel-bans-arab-parties-from-elect ion/_________________'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'

“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”

World Court Claims It Has No Jurisdiction Over Gaza War Crimes
Prosecutor Insists Nothing Can Be Done With Calls for Investigation
Posted January 14, 2009

The International Criminal Court declared today that it has no jurisdiction over the actions of Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, meaning that the growing number of calls by humanitarian organizations to investigate Israeli activities in the Gaza Strip cannot lead to any action by the Hague-based court.

Israel has been accused of a myriad of activities which the court would classify as war crimes, but as Israel signed but never ratified the ICC’s Rome Statute and the Gaza Strip is not considered a “nation” by the court, the actions of Israeli citizens, or indeed anyone else not a national of a signatory nation, would ostensibly not fall under their jurisdiction.

Yet last year, the ICC did claim jurisdiction over Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and filed genocide charges against him even though Sudan, like Israel, was a signatory of the Rome Statute that never ratified it. Bashir argued, more or less successfully so far, against the court having jurisdiction over him, but the fact that he was charged and the court won’t even consider investigating Israel’s actions is bound to lead to accusations of a double standard.

A veteran British Jewish lawmaker compared the Israeli offensive in Gaza Thursday to the Nazis who forced his family to flee from Poland.

Gerald Kaufman, a member of the Jewish Labour movement linked to Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s ruling party, also called for an arms embargo against Israel.

"My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town . . . a German soldier shot her dead in her bed," Kaufman said during a parliamentary debate on the 20-day-old war which has left over 1,000 dead.

"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.

"The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

Israel’s claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants "was the reply of the Nazi," he said, adding: "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."

Kaufman, a well-known critic of Israel, said Hamas was a "deeply nasty" organization, but said it was democratically elected.

He urged Britain to impose an arms embargo on the Jewish state.

"It is time for our government to make clear to the Israeli government that its conduct and policies are unacceptable and to impose a total arms ban on Israel," he said.

"It is time for peace - but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is Israel’s real goal but which is impossible for them to achieve. They are not simply war criminals, they are fools," he added.

UN headquarters in Gaza hit by Israeli 'white phosphorus' shells 15 Jan 2009 The main UN compound in Gaza was left in flames today after being struck by Israeli artillery fire, and a spokesman said that the building had been hit by shells containing the incendiary agent white phosphorus. The attack on the headquarters of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) came as Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, arrived in Israel on a peace mission and plunged Israel's relations with the world body to a new low.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5521925 .ece

Israeli military asked to explain how Gaza media building came to be hit by explosion 15 Jan 2009 Reporters Without Borders calls on the Israeli military to investigate and explain exactly how a 16-storey building in Gaza City that houses several news organisations including Reuters came to be hit by an explosion this morning. An Abu Dhabi TV journalist and a Reuters cameraman were injured in the blast that shook the Al-Shurouq Tower.
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=29997

Israel shells Gaza U.N. warehouse, hospital, news bureaus 15 Jan 2009 The Israeli military punched deeper into Gaza City on Thursday with a series of strikes that hit the United Nations' headquarters, a major hospital and the offices of international media groups. As Israeli leaders weighed an evolving Egyptian initiative that's considered the best hope for ending the 20-day-old conflict, Israeli forces delivered another blow to the Hamas-led Gaza Strip.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/59768.html

The IDF has no mercy for the children in Gaza nursery schools By Gideon Levy 16 Jan 2009 The fighting in Gaza is "war deluxe." Compared with previous wars, it is child's play - pilots bombing unimpeded as if on practice runs, tank and artillery soldiers shelling houses and civilians from their armored vehicles, combat engineering troops destroying entire streets in their ominous protected vehicles without facing serious opposition. A large, broad army is fighting against a helpless population and a weak, ragged organization that has fled the conflict zones and is barely putting up a fight. All this must be said openly, before we begin exulting in our heroism and victory. This war is also child's play because of its victims. About a third of those killed in Gaza have been children - 311, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, 270 according to the B'Tselem human rights group - out of the 1,000 total killed as of Wednesday.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1055574.html

Israel controls access, message in Gaza assault 15 Jan 2009 The Israeli military took about a dozen foreign reporters on a rare foray into the Gaza Strip Thursday, a day when a bombardment killed the Hamas security chief and an Israel shell landed on the United Nations headquarters there. But the journalists saw none of the action. Their 30-minute drive from an army base near the border took them to an unpopulated area where a commander arrived in a tank, gave a statement and answered a few questions. They saw no troops, no combat.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h0PvtGF62P_L_yA3fKUn 7ENnQZ3wD95NS7BO0

U.S. may cut $1b in loan guarantees to Israel over West Bank settlements 16 Jan 2009 The United States administration plans to cut about $1 billion from the balance of its loan guarantees to Israel because of its investments in the settlements. The balance currently stands at $4.6 billion. Washington has not officially informed Jerusalem of the cut.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1055585.html

'Bin Laden urges war on Israel' 09 Jan 2009 A new audio message [LOL! Notice it's never video?] purported to be from Osama Bin Laden has urged Muslims to launch a holy war to stop the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip. The message also said Israel's assault was a desperate attempt to benefit from the last days of President [sic] George Bush.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7829716.stm_________________'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'

“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”

In eight years: twenty Israelis died from Gaza rockets, 4,000 Israelis died from car accidents.

PACIFICA – About 700 Israelis have been arrested for protesting against the war on Gaza since the beginning of the deadly offensive, said Neve Gordon, chair of the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel on Monday.

"700 Israelis have been arrested since this war began, because they protested this war. This has not made it to an international media, and it’s an act of intimidation by the state against those who protest the war," Gordon told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!.

On the number of Israeli deaths, Gordon said: "between ten and twenty people, Israelis, have died from rockets in the eight years that rockets have been launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel. During the same amount of time, 4,000 Israelis have died from car accidents."

But Israel still used that as an excuse to bomb Gaza.

"From these twenty people, we’re allowed to enter into the Gaza Strip and bomb them from the air into their cage and kill 275 children," said Gordon, who is also the author of the book Israel’s Occupation.

"Disproportionality is a term from international law. Israel has been defying international law and international agreements and international decisions from 1967, or probably from before. One of these decisions is that Israel must return these (Palestinian) territories. And by maintaining and holding onto these territories through violent means," said Gordon.

Although Gordon opposes Gaza rocket fire, he explained that the Palestinians are trying to defend themselves.

"The right to self-defense is a right to self-defense from violence. We have to understand that the occupation itself is violence. It’s an act of violence. Putting people in a prison, in a prison of one million and a half million people and keeping them there for years on end without basic foodstuff, without allowing them to enter and exit when they will, is an act of violence. Without electricity, without clean water, it’s all an act of violence. And these people are resisting. I am against the way they’re resisting, but we have to look at their violence versus our violence," said Gordon.

"Gaza is still under occupation, because Israel controls all of its borders, and the West Bank is under occupation, and East Jerusalem is under occupation. And the act—the first, the initial, the primordial act of violence is the occupation. The rockets are a reaction to that act of violence. And so, we have to keep in mind that within—it’s not between a state and another state. It’s been between an occupier and an occupied," he noted.

On the media war, Gordon noted: "Israel is dealing with a propaganda war. Israel is the one that disseminated a video of Hamas shooting rockets from a school, a video that’s almost two years old, claiming that the video was taken a day or two earlier. So Israel is in a propaganda war."

Gordon noted that "although Hamas did launch an incredible amount of rockets at the end of the ceasefire," it was Israel which broke the ceasefire on November 4th "when it attacked in the Gaza Strip."

"Israel actually is a first actor that broke the ceasefire," noted Gordon.

Gordon also accused Israel of committing acts of terrorism.

"Yes, the Hamas is fighting out from a civilian population, but Israel has the choice whether it’s going to bomb the civilian population or not, and it is intentionally deciding to bomb the civilian population. So in terms of intentionality in bombing areas where there are civilians, Israel is acting like a state terrorist. So, if your definition of terrorism doesn’t take into account the identity of the actor—and state actors can also be terrorists—then when you bomb a school and when you bomb a university and when you bomb a neighborhood and you’re killing much more civilians than militants, then you’re doing something that is an act of terror," he explained.

Gordon cited two reasons behind Israel's offensive against Gaza.

"I think the actual reasons have to do—the two major reasons—with rebuilding the reputation of the Israeli military after its humiliation in 2006 in Lebanon and the upcoming Israeli elections."

But the Israeli author believes that there is a way to solve the conflict.

"Hamas is the elected government of the Palestinian people. We don’t need to like them. I don’t like them. But they are the elected government, and we need to sit down and talk with them and not bomb them," he noted.

"We have to come out and say we are willing to talk with our enemies, even with people that say that they do not believe in the existence of Israel. The PLO said that they do not believe in the existence of Israel for many years. And ultimately, we sat down and talked with them, and they are now considered our Palestinian partner. I believe that if there is a pragmatic side, a strong pragmatic wing in Hamas, that if we start negotiation with them, over the years these people will also agree to the existence of Israel and be willing to live side by side with us," he added.

"If we do not talk with them, if we continue this cycle of violence, ultimately Israel will be destroyed, because ultimately, the technological edge that we have over our neighbors will not be meaningful. So we have to change our approach. We have to be pro—by changing our approach, we’re actually pro-Israeli. We say we want to see Israel a hundred years from now. And the only way we’ll see Israel exist a hundred years from now is if Israel makes peace with Syria, with Lebanon and with the Palestinian people," Gordon explained._________________'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'

“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”

Gaza: Residents waving white flags 'shot dead as they flee their homes'
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
Flames and debris rise following an Israeli air strike on January 13, 2009 in Rafah, Gaza Strip

Israeli forces said they had pushed deeper into Gaza City amid heavy fighting, with some units within a mile of the densely populated urban centre. Terrified residents were said to be fleeing from many homes which had been set alight.

At least three Palestinians in Gaza were shot dead yesterday after Israeli soldiers fired on a group of residents leaving their homes on orders from the military and waving white flags, according to testimony taken by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem. The testimony was rejected by the military after what it said was a preliminary investigation.

The thrust by Israeli ground forces into Tel Hawwa was the furthest the Israelis had gone into Gaza City since military operations were launched on 27 December. Meanwhile, Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, declared that he would press forward with an "iron fist". While his government in Jerusalem is claiming that Hamas's military capabilities have been severely damaged, its senior intelligence sources have revealed that only a "few hundred" of the movement's 20,000 men have been killed, including several of its key leaders. The officials also stated that Hamas still had significant supplies of rockets left in their arsenal despite firing several hundred of them into Israel since military operations began.

However, Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli chief of staff, told Israeli MPs: "We have achieved a lot in hitting Hamas and its infrastructure ... but there is still work ahead." Israeli aircraft carried out 60 raids yesterday.

As Palestinian hospital officials revealed that the death toll has risen to at least 952, half of them women and children, John Ging, the UN Relief and Works Agency's director of operations in Gaza, called on the international community to protect civilians in Gaza; he also wants a full investigation into allegations that Israeli military forces have used illegal weapons.

On the relatively peaceful West Bank, a Palestinian man was killed after he tried to grab a gun from an Israeli soldier in Hebron and a 15-year-old boy was shot near the city of Qalqiliya while throwing stones at a road used by soldiers and settlers. Palestinian officials said a settler had fired the fatal shot.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, is heading to the region for talks with leaders in Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Syria. He said: "My message is simple: the fighting must stop. To both sides, I say: Just stop now."

In Gaza, Munir Shafik al-Najar told B'Tselem that members of his extended family started trying to leave their homes after the Israeli army began demolishing buildings in the area of Kuza'a, close to the Israeli border with south-eastern Gaza. Mr Najar said the Israeli soldiers were using gunfire to signify that residents should leave, but then started shooting "indiscriminately".

He testified that his relative Rawhiya had stepped out of the family-owned building, one of whose walls had been destroyed by a bulldozer, expecting her family to follow, but she was shot. The military subsequently attacked another group escaping leaving two more of his relatives dead. The military said late last night that it had found the claim to be "without foundation".

anyone see what I see? The press changing??

A United Nations worker surveys the damage from Israeli bombardment at the United Nations headquarters in Gaza City, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009. Witnesses and U.N. officials said that Israeli shells struck the United Nations headquarters in Gaza City. The U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon has expressed "strong protest and outrage" to Israel over the shelling of the compound. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)
Smoke rises after an Israeli bombing in the Gaza Strip, as seen from the Israeli side of the border between southern Israel and the Gaza Strip, Thursday Jan. 15, 2009
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00059/AP090115095 76_59644d.jpg
United Nations workers and Palestinian firefighters work to try and put out a fire and save bags of food aid at the United Nations headquarters after it was hit in Israeli bombardment in Gaza City, Thursday, Jan. 15
A shell fired from an Israeli Army tank explodes over a building in the outskirts of Gaza City, as seen from the Israeli-Gaza border, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2009 According to a guy on Al-Jazeera that is a White Phosphorous shell!
Fares al-Dali drinks tea as he sits on a pile of wood and cartons in a house in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, Monday, Jan. 12, 2009. In the al-Dali family's two-room shack in the Shati refugee camp, 21 people _ half of them relatives who fled the fighting _ take turns sleeping because the family doesn't have enough mattresses. For lack of fuel, they cook on trash fires _ paper and cartons collected in the neighborhood. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)
Oh my I'll stop there just found out there is 79 pics in total! Enjoy.http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/gaza-residents-wavin g-white-flags-shot-dead-as-they-flee-their-homes-14138998.html?action= Popup_________________'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'

“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”

The end of military strikes in Gaza announced on the worlds media now for tomorrow morning.

Agreement signed with Tzipni Livni and Condi Rice.

Israel has clearly lost the war...

They have certainly sapped more of Arabs resorces though.
But good news none the less. I guess thats why the media started reporting more fairly?_________________'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'

“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”

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